 This is our time to go to the train station, so that's what you have to remember when you go to the station. This is the capacity, if I turn off the camera for a second. I'm just shy, I like to sit in the test. I'm from the world. Nice to meet you. I've been somewhere, I've been. Yeah, no, I've been in the lobby. Wait a second, I've never been there before. I'm just shy. So, full of the chair, we have it all ready, and the way that today is going to run is that we're going to have three panels with three conversations, let's call them. And the conversions will initially sit at this table and around. We'll converse over one of the topics on 40 minutes or so, and then they will return to the larger group, and we will all discuss. We may break us into two groups, so we can have a smaller breakout session to continue talking about the same topics and the things that have come up in the conversation. And then we'll come into the next one, and I'll have some people in the middle and we'll go back to that. Basically, it's in and out, but across. Does that make sense? Yes, sir. Let's give it a shot. So, let's compete. My name is Daniela, I am the artistic director of Pool Security Theater. We are primary organizers of the Curie Factory Festival of Osvaldo Theater, which is going on now through June 25th. We have 30 companies from around the country performing, so I strongly encourage you all to stay if you can show us over the next two weeks. But today, we are here to speak about artistic excellence and the problems that we have the field have around speaking about artistic excellence. So in a way, we're going to be talking about talking about it quite quickly. My co-sponsors for the event, Theater Bay Area and Network of Ensemble Theater. First of all, very happy to be working with them on that as well as these days, because I did not choose to provide us with this wonderful venue. Brad Erickson from Theater Bay Area will be arriving after a conference that he's out right now somewhere else in the city. Brad running around to make everything happen, but many Theater Bay Area are here and making everything run right now. Mark Valdez, the national coordinator for the Network of Ensemble Theater, is coming up from Los Angeles. Last time I heard of a start-up in an airport to do some fog delays, as well as Diane Rodriguez, who is one of our panelists for later in the afternoon, but we are confident that we'll get here in time. So I just wanted to make a couple of notes about this excellence, about the why of this convening, and some hopes for what might come out of it. What are we going to talk about? I didn't want the conversation to be entirely about trying to define what excellence is. We could spend a whole day talking about that, and that's a valuable exercise in itself. But it's not quite what we had in mind today. What we want to do is focus on my sense and our sense of the field. As a field, we have some trouble talking about politics. And I personally feel like we want to continue improving the quality of the work that we as a field make. I'm not here to offer a definition of what kind of excellence you should be striving for, what kind of quality you should be striving for. But it's still interesting. What I'm interested in is us as a field being able to converse constructively and be able to hopefully as a result of that improve the working. I think that as a field we are constantly asking, we're talking about audiences, we're talking about marketing, we're talking about how we sell more tickets, we're talking about how we can do better communication with our communities. And what I very rarely hear us talk about is, how good a job are we doing? And how are we doing better? I think that we have conversations about plays that we see at the bar, at the play, often with people who are friends of ours, and we're very happy then to talk about what a wonderful piece of work we just saw, or how much we hated that piece of work we just saw, but people may disagree. I tend to feel that as a field we somehow don't have great tools for discussing the work with our fellow artists, and that kind of frustration, if we can manage to do it better, is one of the key elements towards all of us making better work in whatever way our goal for our work is, whether that is bringing the community together, whether that is bringing a certain piece of art, whether that is exploring the technique for a new idea, thinking about it, and I feel that my friends and colleagues in other fields, all of them, any of them, have some better conversations around this, and I think that we have built it better from people's point of view. I want to, we may notice, but I have to use the word excellence, to call that off in this conversation, despite the fact that artistic excellence is the title of the community. The reason for that is that we sent out some questionnaires to many of the panelists, asking, what is our institute of excellence mean to you? What are some definitions? What are some examples? And we got an enormous number of wonderful responses and there is a, you should all have a document that says definitions of excellence, which is not intended to say this is the definition of excellence, but rather to say, here are some ideas for you. However, one topic that came up several times from several people was the notion that the word excellence in itself is a problem, that it implied a certain elitism, that it implied a certain foxism, that it brought up the question of who is it who is making this definition of excellence. And what I want to say today is that, I guess we might use the word quality, we might use another word that they don't know, but I had an experience recently at the Network Bucks on Hope Theater's gathering in Philadelphia earlier this year, the subject of which was genre design work. Very interesting topic, certainly that a lot of people there who have made work in different ways and wanted to talk about it, but we spent the entire two-day conference arguing over what the meaning of genre was. Which you need to tell. It's an interesting and valuable conversation, but very little I think actually came out of that conversation that was useful in talking about genre design work. We talked about what genre meant and different people's opinions about it. And I do think that the question of what is excellence or what is an excellence is extremely important, but I don't want us to get caught up for the entire day arguing over what we mean by excellence. I think that on some level we can all agree that some work we see is better and some work we see is not as good. I'm not going to tell you what the definitions of this are, but I guess living in California, I've spent my life here, this notion that it's all good isn't very helpful to us as theater makers, because what do we do as artists? What do we do as theater makers? We make choices. And whether we're saying, I'm making this consciously, I'm making this choice because it's better than this choice, that's our job on some level. What the goals of your work is, I'm not here to tell you about, but we make choices. We need to acknowledge that, and we need to try and help each other make better choices. That's my hope for the field, that's my hope for the next five hours. And I think that we should celebrate the qualities. When we make good work, we need to be able to celebrate that and we need to have some way of discussing that with our viewers. So, thank you all for being here. It's just amazing to see people who are really engaged with these big questions. And I want to have, make sure that we hear every piece of voices today. You have a basic schedule today in your packets. I suspect that if we're already 50 minutes behind, there you go. But in order for everybody to get here and get started, that is necessary. So I'm going to try and keep this on a relatively tight schedule. I'll be moderating the first conversation with Brad Erickson from the Theater of the Area. We'll be moderating the second one. And Mark Valdes from the Net will be moderating the third one. And we are live streaming. Hello to our national, perhaps international audience. Quite wonderful. We want to thank them in the stage for helping us set that up and do the live streaming for you, please, to me. And many of the shows that we hear about here over the next couple of weeks will be live streaming. And we have audiences to be gathered over the next few weeks. Super cool. Okay, so to begin, I'm going to ask our panelists for the first conversation. They are Mark Brugger, Lisa Stuyler, Morgan Janes for Dessa Jones, and Conrad Bishop. Come on up and get to the table. Back in with some chargeable things technical. We'll be calling out some questions as they come over to the Twitter to see if they do. Can you hear me? Yeah. Hear me with a shout out. See if we can hear anything else. If you have trouble hearing, please call it out and cross the microphones and see if they work. I think the way that I would love to start is just to do, if you don't have time to do a group introduction for everybody, you could just go around the table for our panelists and introduce yourself, say where you come to us from. And then we'll go from there. And the two topics of the conversation that I'd like to look at right now are why do you think we have trouble talking about excellence as a group of young people? And what is the value of doing so? Can we have a partner in Dessa? I'm Dessa Jones and I am the co-artistic director of Cultural Odyssey in African-American and perform arts company in San Francisco. I'm also the founder and artistic director of The Day of Projects, theater for across the world. Congratulations. I am the director of the book in San Francisco and now I used to be in Philadelphia. Congratulations on that. I'm understanding it actually for somebody who is on a foundation. You're not going to get any money out of me. I'm Mark Rucker. I'm the associate artistic director of the American Conservatory of Theater and I'm also a director. My name is Lisa Steiner. I'm the executive artistic director of Z-Space. Welcome to our home, we're all here with that. Let's get this together. My name is Monica Jemez. I'm a dramaturg and creative consultant for the Amherst Arts Agency. All right. So let's just begin with this question. The question of, again, it's talking about talking about quality of text. There you go. I guess, you know, how do you feel that conversation happens in the field? Why do you think you may have trouble doing so? Go. Good morning. I'm free. We count on you. All right. I always run my mouth. Well, for me, it's sort of like on two extreme sides. On the one hand, it's so subjective and so individual. That's really difficult to codify. And on the other hand, it's so precise and controlled by a small segment of the society in terms of what the standards are. You know, for me, it's the two extremes that's impossible to talk about really because it's so individual and on the other hand, it's too reductive and possible to nail down because it's controlled by standards and controlled by smaller people. I think we haven't, I don't think we haven't we haven't arrived at this place. What is the community? I mean, as a color woman, I look around and there's other many people of color or color and equal here. And that is the conversation. When I think about ensemble theater, I think that one of the things that we can work out as a theater community is to be more of an ensemble in the theater community just to make sure that we're all here to talk about it, to have this conversation. Because it's very hard to sort of talk about that sort of thing. We might be really involved in many years of opening up. ACT, because he only read this NEA and he was like, well, you know what excellence this is. And I'm like, well, you're talking to me now. You're not talking to, you know, some of your comments or something like this. And he just used to go there and it was kind of scary because you know how very, don't you know I'm the ACT, don't you know? And it was like, yeah, I know all that. But you know, I want to talk about another big definition. So it's like, let's talk about the community, about how do we as a community, a community, but in San Francisco's community find a way to inform us in discussion. You know, the late Stanley Hughes was always a kick. You know what I'm saying? You know what I'm saying was always a kick. So can you expand on that and talk about what that conversation would look like to see it happen? So I agree with you. I think it's one of the innate problems that we do. We are so on the treadmill and just trying to put our heads above water and just do what we do, stay tight, but we don't come very into it, I think. And you can go out and see what's going on in our community, but then to have an discussion, I absolutely agree it's not necessarily happening. It should be. But I'm curious, how... I think we should have more, I think we should have more food fest. Yeah. I mean, food is such an amazing way for us to share and it's not intimidating, you know. I was just invited to Brown University as an activist and I was just invited there to have a dinner party with activists from all over the world to talk about what we're doing. So it wasn't like, you got to repay me. That would be something. I mean, say it's just what we know how to have fun. Yes, you know. That's another thing as well. Everything is everything. So I think we have to find ways to get other people to get the others and the other folks to come in. And I think some of you said, well, that's a community act. Let's have a great place. A massive environment. We will do that. But as I was saying, it's a really interesting model that we have because we are all open so far and we keep ourselves on the blow to survive and thrive to even find the time to keep connecting with each other. It's like if you don't know their business history. I don't think we have worked any harder than that. It's annoying work. Well, they tend to get paid. They get paid. I think one of the things that I started thinking about when we were asking this question is, it is difficult if you see something and your hope every time you go to the theater or to see a piece of art is that it will move you, it will transform you, it will inspire you and when you dedicate your time to see something that is disappointing to you, how do you have that conversation with the other people? And I don't know if it's our place to have that conversation unless it's inviting. Because I think it's a long time to have that conversation. We've had wonderful experiences with bringing people into rehearsal when it was enough on its feet to see what they all went along. But not so far that basically they were making the judgment and that's something we did a little bit when they were together with the public this year. It's a very strange thing for other people to react to. It's like, I don't know if you want me to say this, but we're in that reality so much of well, how do you say to your friend that this sucks. But I think that's because it becomes futile, it becomes just totally on the spot and it's after the fact that we can't do anything about it. There's one quote in here I really love, I wish I had said it, but it talks about the difference between the excellence in terms of the aspiration of the artist and the ability to understand reality and their aspiration and something they're going for. It's a power that they're never going to reach and I think a lot of artists do feel that, but I actually think that's a good thing. They know that you're trying to go as opposed to it. And then there's the definition that really is more an external one which is the spinal product what it's like. Isn't it so dazzling and so effective that you know you go, oh wow, you know you're quite moved to come and praise it. So I think those are those two things of the excellence in process and the excellence in working on the product and how we have to go to kind of cinnabar about it but the final finished piece and then how it, what the get-charge of it is, how it labels the world and the community that is talked into so yeah, the differentiation But I don't think we avoid that conversation because we have different definition of excellence. No, I don't So I think I think we do this as you have a sense of I've got to tell the foundation which is the external one That becomes very much about how to put the best I started thinking about when we were doing a lot of reading the best interchanges that I was a part of were roundtable things and conferences, just listening sessions. People come in one of them 24 hours they came in, let you play 10 minutes of your piece you can get from a roundtable the most committed and for the most part tactful, but lots of brutal evaluation of it started with mostly the little technical issues it wasn't so much, I don't think there's a right to do that sort of thing on the radio it had to do with your editing there from this to this and you made the error and so on those are any of the from many of the this is, because they were listening to this is what I'm hearing and this is what I get and then you can take it and go over it I've never seen that happen and see what you did the communities that expand itself around that some of the best work I do is some of the work as a professional artist I work with large communities for lack of a better cure and as I said in talking to you I work with women with HIV and right now one of my actors is dealing with neurological stuff and her daughter called me this morning her mom left last night saying she's going to rehearsal rehearsal rehearsal theater becomes the most magical thing in this woman's life, that makes sense they just found her and brought her home and I've got to go over there and see about her and I leave here and it's like but this is a community of people that feel very much a part of this theater community where we talk about sitting around and technically being able to say well that didn't work or maybe you want to edit this, cut that and maybe I am in a community of people who come out of their HIV status and I talk back when I do a piece and it may be too long you know it's like you're sitting in a theater and it's like oh god I'm thinking I'm killing the theater goer people just entranced and you have this community that does not see themselves as a part of the theater community all of a sudden I feel like why don't you say that I've lived with HIV for 25 years and my point is back when you were asking me about the communities are so vast now they're so different I mean it's like we're talking we're talking about foods theory we're talking about condosanto we're talking about the African American Shakespeare we're talking about cultural overseas performance music when we do something when where I live if the theater community has expanded so much I work in Africa and Africa are cultural beings in the prison and they'll put buses at the market theater and they will be full they'll have to go back and get to they'll end the load up in the end because everybody wants to come to the theater come to the prison and see what kind of theater we're making in the prisons and so it's not just the Negro until we're all it is like you know when the press comes from all over Africa to shoot this stuff it is that kind of wrong but they the artist is so committed and the public is so strong and trans but it's back to us just being aware that it's expanding because theater is fabulous we've been educated and we've done our work in it at the same time it's like it's very hard for me to talk about excellence because I'm so exposed to all these different wings and arms of how theater has evolved as a general idea as art maybe I'm thinking just personally in terms of when I go to anything I know I think for me it's more about effectiveness was the performance of the piece of work was it effective in the context in which it was presented you know so it was intentional like I've gone to things that were way too long and raw but they were such a passionate intentionality and understanding of the conversation with the audience that it was meant for but it was incredibly effective yet if I went through another more standard drama church you know kind of deal off oh is this a perfect work of art in this standard I would say no but in terms of the excellence of the experience it was incredibly effective I guess the aspects of excellence with the production you know you have an excellent or high quality actor on stage so great script or the design elements there are aspects of that too and I agree more in what's the ultimate product at the end is how effective it is or it could have been excellent artifact if you're on the shelf and you go oh wasn't that beautiful and perfect and excellent you know so I mean so I know what you're all talking about is the context where it's being done being done for with me I've certainly had experiences where I've done something that I've extremely come to but I felt like it was sitting in front of the wrong and that really did not feel good like what I loved in a big regional theater where the audience was not accepting all that work I've heard being in La Jolla and La Jolla California I first made big but girls hearted women with two nice solo tour before so I was like I just started I was at sushi so they invited this theater club to come and see and all these fancy fancy people from La Jolla they sat there they were terrified and then the person asked he asked me what do you want us to feel about this and it's like wrong group I go down I think there's a possibility that people in that group somehow it moves them but they didn't even know what to do with them which is actually maybe they've been away a good group to be doing it well later as they were upending as well as Jones you know it's like just you know but yeah I guess they talked to me they were like just kind of oh my god don't you lie for her maybe she has some blow away they were saying they were never going to be in a prison they were not but you know the actors who came they were just going to do that and they got scared and they had any prison help this was the La Jolla obviously they were trying to make sense of it who would you say I don't think that one part of the conversation precludes the other part of the conversation I mean the kind of arguments you talk about obviously there's something that is so overwhelming at the same time if somebody says something and they can't hear about somebody maybe it still doesn't make any difference but somebody in the audience would say and I'm talking about at least having a conversation on that very fundamental technical level might mean staying there but let's face it the movies are more successful right now than we are I hate to say it but I think one of the reasons is that they're better technically they may suck but even I think on the script writing and there are certain kinds of basic standards if you're a director of photography and you have these credits it's like to look like something may not be cutting it, it may not be a block art but you have a certain standard professional standard and we pay for that if we don't they are they do have the capacity for talking to my audience and my audience both but that's a really interesting point and I think anyone can go home and you can do that solo down technically you're totally right but that's where I think that what you can't do at home by yourself in a room by yourself is create theater so there's something that we have that is impossible for anybody on that side of the technical world to do and you're saying that you don't think that the work, the actual text is to carve what's happening on the film industry isn't there being better technically is a guarantee I've seen some perfectly behind the scenes that are up there and I might as well be watching totally because they I hear what you're saying and I agree with you personally theater should be something that's the actual that you can't do on the film that's my personal view and I'm terribly interested in what plays you can do on TV because I can do better you're right probably I mean I have a big belief of artistic rigor and I do think that that is a fact you know, how much time and attention do you pay to figure out is it just something that's the first thought do you really expand you know, are you willing to give your full concentration explain you all to give your full concentration to you know, over a period of time really bad circumstances you know, I think that's palpable I think there's somehow an artist who does that you feel it, you're going to carve it or wood carving, you know you know if it really were meticulous and whatever with intentionality with that concentration with that time and effort so I do think that rigor is definitely part of it so where do you use the habit which I was telling someone that I work with a wonderful composer a songwriter named G.O. Wyeth who has this great little sort of phrase that's sort of the purpose of art but also the purpose of theater which he swears he stole from the Russian formalist that I think he just says and it's quite simple it says the purpose of theater is to interrupt habit which I love it's so simple but it's like excellence is something that makes you go to interrupt habit and how you look into the people and the assumptions about yourself the world the nature of artistic experience what's the actual whatever habit is politics you know if you can go and move into desire to the inventors know what the empty script is but the two angels I don't know if you can see it they're on a showroom and Bruno Gauss is trying to explain to us why he wants to be human he says a beautiful thing about coffee and all that but then he says don't you want to be able to go ooh oh and I thought that's that interruption where you kind of go oh and whatever it takes to interrupt you how to get to be seen as part of this discussion and I think it's difficult to have a discussion because we live in a society which actually wants us to maintain habit a lot lovely I want to just sort of hear towards the ending back which is again about where the obstacles towards the conversation and I think that we live in a society that wants us to stay in that same mode it's certainly one very poignant example of it making your work at the wrong time wrong audience mentioned the financial problem that we're always struggling just to make enough work to stay above water and that's sort of that am I looking at my life from 10 feet or am I looking at it from 60,000 feet you're always stuck dealing with what's urgent and what's hard to ever pull back and look at what's important so those are some of the things that I'm hearing here questions of what's appropriate for what community and so having a conversation in one way which isn't actually useful for the person who might be conversing having a vocabulary around that in both ways sounds very weird I'm wondering if there are some other things that took the mind for impediments or conversations when this grew bigger I I feel here and then as a director if I worked with my large community group I learned a lot about how I get the best performance looking through an artist's eyes of the people asking about the stories but I think about directors I love Miss Greco at The Magic when I saw L.A. it was just everything I've seen that she's done and of course Como Santo, I go there and it's seeing John West piece and thinking as a director of things then I can be literally I can talk about everyone but again it's back to the community so fast and it keeps expanding and pulling in it really makes sense to me and craft but if we're going to have everybody I feel like the people are if the community if there's all these communities that are inviting in how do we then discuss excellence I would argue that you do require a director as a director within the circumstances if you get those people coming in if you get them to explore things if you get them to picture what they have and how they see themselves you are a kind of different it is within the context someone coming in might go well I have all these skin I think the other thing that happens is that there is a small segment of the society that does not want to deal with the control of the skin it's not going to deal with the control it's like really we're still meeting the New York Times it's like you know every season some of you may have had this call from me I call up and I say hello are we going to talk about plays should I just meet your subscription for more times oh I heard yes but who is given the authority to define it and what are the same it's not that it seems to me it's not how does the world define excellence or how do we take our ideas and voice them on the rest of the world but why can't we talk about this conversation why can't we have a direct conversation about whatever we think about excellence I mean I'm a little I'm always having a conversation so you know my day to day existence is having a conversation to a certain extent there are certain people who are pretty good at not pulling any punches and giving it to you straight but actually let me draw back to something that I said earlier which is this question of when is it appropriate or what's appropriate and I think in an individual piece of theater bringing someone in once the show is already open and getting feedback on that piece of theater and making it better for maybe isn't so helpful but I would argue that in the long run if my company full steering wants to continue to improve our quality then it's not just about that show and your feedback definitely critiques about how it's useful down the line not if I'm a pilot maybe the right time to hear that so that I can hear and maybe you have to invite that yes I'm not sure or maybe we need to be encouraged to invite that yes as far as conversation because the bluntest most brutal and straightforward commentary I've had from trusted peers has probably been the most helpful and so it just depended on trusted peers that you respect and then it goes back to Morgan I just came up to you at the beginning and said who should I be reading who should I be looking at because Morgan has invested so deeply in theater makers of this country and this world and that she has proven herself in many ways and helps to feel and provide the feel with so much quality excellent work that she now is a trusted person to go to say what do you put and I trust everything you can see wow I hope you don't thank you thank you I mean I have the rebutton that I should because everyone is entitled to my opinion right you know I really I have a joke that's saying the only reason I have any status anywhere in my 20s I was just to realize that I wasn't supposed to open my mind but say what I think so I did I was going to say what I think and you don't have to agree with me just agree with me because it's the only way and it is true it's like I trust you I love what you love so I want to know what you have to say but somebody else here what they have to say to me because I don't maybe feel that it would be productive to go forward that way I mean you often do anybody but it's also for me it's also part to understand when it is best for me to give negative criticism because I think I see plays all the time that I don't respond to then why do I want to hear from me if somebody sitting next to me sort of hear the same thing that I thought was horrible so I have to accept myself on that conversation because it's not really I don't think it's useful at all sometimes it can be I find it really really interesting my question is like what's useful to you in terms of achieving what your definition of excellence is well the same thing that I usually try to give my actors that is what you see pretty evident it is a matter of dealing with the diagnosis or the prescription it's a description obviously I'm getting this I'm getting this is that if that's what you want totally refused at the first three minutes you're succeeded how do you have to be we have to practice ways to be kind but clear in the African-American community growing up there there's always been people that thought it was their job to come and tell me you know my sister that was off the channel you know it's like or just take this experience give it or you don't have to if you don't want to but I got to tell you this I think that I'm learning how to be that because I'm learning to talk about trusted friends so do we little nights where it's justice people that we really trust and like maybe back to that dinner party thing where we do something like that but I think that any of us are talking to each other because what I say of my community groups is like okay good good good it's a creative act you can't do it wrong you can do better let's think about how we do it better it's what I constantly say to people and maybe it's a part of my mother feminine thing most of us feel like it's bad anyways most people feel like oh god I know it's some and that's why I began at the beginning they were like this is great but you gotta cut back but it better to my community there are people that are like this is small they come and find me and just tell me that you know it's a really good idea to say why don't you go ahead and take a little bit of time to do this for you because you get this not that great and it's like you have people that have told me the writing in that part is told me to be clear and it would be better if you took it out of the work and looked at that particular writing and I didn't want to say take this in spirit so I think it's about how can we find ways so far and find ways to share our stuff with our trusted friends and no wine until after sometimes you get it straight and clear let me throw another thought and see if this resonates I think one reason is that a lot of people have resistance to stop myself you don't want to offend anybody because these are the people you want to work with or these are the people you're hoping are going to hire you or the writing teachers you collaborate with and also I think since we are in an ensemble festival and in an ensemble discussions as well I think in the ensemble theater world and in the northern California world we're not happy we want to live in it very much I think that's kind of a problem too sometimes how do we deal with that? that's a new thing I'm 62 years old and I feel like I don't service you if I'm so worried about because I think that in the end I think you grab at the ear we don't each other but you grab at the ear for me again it's like how do you place your words you don't have to go you don't have to head for a gut all the time but it's like that so we guys are practicing being honest behind each other and the people are going to survive and people rise to the top and that's I'm not listening I know what you're saying but I think it's a new day I'm too old now but what about some people I think he's an elder as an elder that's my position he's like yo I'm going to talk to you today someone down the line somebody's going to go along and it's going to be like people are going to say you hurt my feelings it's like you're all right you don't worry about anything you don't worry about anything I don't like to service anybody to worry about the next show I don't know about this I'm going to say I'm going to talk to you today let me ask you Lisa because you're in a position to do a better or worse often a producer and often a presenter but it's probably something for coming to often for your opinion are you going to put me on your stage or what you don't know generally I mean the bottom line for me is that there's a lot of great work out there that I would like to put on the stage but I don't necessarily have the resources to put on there and then there's also is that work is this space conducive to the work that we're putting in there which it's not for all work and I'm learning as a producer I come from Blackbots intimate small Blackbots theater and this is anything but that and so how do I my artistic aesthetic is being kind of crack open how I fill that space with things that mean something to me don't get swallowed into that so it's really fitting how do you have that conversation with people for whom it's not that emails I tend to do if there's something that I really believe in or an ensemble or play that's not home that's appropriate I can't pick up such a phone to go to Jess or to Mark or to Patrick Julia or to Jason and say look there's this great project playwright or designer actor you've got to look at them I don't have a place for them that I really highly recommend them and I think that's the way of trying to help help bring the quality to other places too that I just can't accommodate and we all have limited resource, limited seasons all of that stuff I would be very fortunate because I don't have a season and I don't have subscribers and I I'm kind of I feel fortunate that I don't have that anyway, I'm not catering to anybody except for the theater makers we've got just a couple minutes left I don't think you've thought of some of the impediments or anything well I guess it's interesting that you say impediments in the most case that you just need to say like a cream rising from the top but it is something about that energy and that movement and you know to reveal what my Mulu dramaturgy is you practice Mulu dramaturgy yes I do but what I mean is that it's all about energy and movement so a lot about what I do is what are your impediments to that movement I would say when we build something we're really being excellent you play a game of jenga you play a game of jenga if you did all this stuff to build it but then what can you take away and it still stands because that's going to be audience because of romance where it just draws the back of a woman but she knows her need her elbow is on her knee because he's drawn it with the full knowledge of it so what do you do to complete the drawing I think it's like excellent work but it's like where is how do you get rid of obstacles to something and I think in that case you know what I'm saying I think this piece is a movement you know like for example there's this like actor coach on the piece and then he talks and that you know you have a shimmer and there's also movement to it whether it's up or down or sideways or in any direction and what gets in the way of that movement either inside a piece that you're constructing or you're in movement in the world so we say yeah you're not right for a year but maybe and I get into trouble with this as people say I have a piece that's going to go to Broadway and I go well I should know this and we just want it to be university and that's not significant to you rather than having it stuck on its route to Broadway is not good enough for you I don't know what you're talking about but I mean talking to somebody else about the work is not that much different than talking to an actor you can tell them how it sounds but that's not what it helps to do and in that kind of circumstance the best director is you you know this thing I find I find I happen to listen if I start to talk something about a piece of work unless it's a piece of work that I would have to be talking about now that's dangerous because if we involve that it would probably be what I would like to do with it but you know if you listen to what it wants to be this is what I would like to see I would just want to know if they accept it if they don't one of the things that I think is really interesting because being here they are newly reached to the Bay Area is finding ways to connect with other theater makers and I think for a long time maybe we felt disconnected from each other that was sort of a silo but I find more that we make an effort to connect with each other and things like last year we had a conversation with a lot of that actually created a trilogy that happened in almost three theaters and so it was a time to be all said we all love this thing how can we make it happen rather than oh no I want it all we're going to steal we're going to sell all of this thing why not create a trilogy that spoke to a lot of people and also connected a bunch of theater makers that were separated on the note of expansive and conclusive we're going to wrap up this conversation thank you very much